For the third consecutive year no vendors were recognized as Challengers or Leaders in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM). The void atop the report is due in large part to the recession, writes Kimberly Collins, managing vice president at Gartner and co-author of the report, which caused buyers to focus on tactical areas of marketing rather than on the EMM platform. The report does say, however, that if market momentum continues to increase one or two Leaders could emerge by 2011.

The report defines EMM as the business strategies, process automation, and technologies required to effectively operate a marketing department, align resources, execute customer-centric strategies, and improve marketing performance. From a technology perspective, the report continues, EMM is an integrated, enterprise-wide platform for marketing, including all roles and functions that support executional, operational, and analytical marketing processes.

Vendors were evaluated on the following criteria:

Product/Service;

Overall Viability;

Sales Execution/Pricing;

Market Responsiveness and Track Record; and

Operations.

The following vendors were included in the report and are listed in alphabetical order within their respective quadrants:

While vendors in this space have struggled recently to convince companies to purchase enterprise-wide platforms, Collins writes that tactical investments that are quick to implement and fast to achieve return-on-investment (ROI) remain strong.

The report also notes a renewed interest in EMM investments during the first half of 2010, compared with all of 2009, which if continued will likely produce the EMM Magic Quadrant's first group of Leaders.

Several vendor trends that could potentially propel the category forward in the next twelve months, thus ending the industry slump and filling the conspicuous leadership absence, are as follows:

A focus on digital marketing;

marketing performance management;

mobile;

loyalty;

lead management;

collaborative or distributed campaign management;

industry-specific solutions and templates;

SaaS platforms for delivery;

and improved partner strategies and management.

The report predicts at least two EMM vendors will make significant marketing resource management purchases during the next two years and that larger vendors will emulate the IBM acquisition of Unica by moving into the marketing automation space or expanding their capabilities via acquisition.

When asked why Infor was dropped Collins said that they didn't meet the minimum criteria for inclusion. When asked which criteria in particular Collins referenced the section of the report that reads:

"Vendor must (1) meet the minimum criteria for inclusion in the campaign management and MRM Magic Quadrants; or (2) have been evaluated on the campaign management Magic Quadrant and have a generally available MRM solution, but may not yet meet the minimum criteria to be included in the MRM Magic Quadrant; or (3) have been evaluated on the CRM Multichannel Campaign Management Magic Quadrantand have a strong technology partnership with an MRM vendor to deliver a preintegrated EMM solution, but may not yet meet the minimum criteria to be included in the MRM Magic Quadrant."

Other than the Infor snub, however, the report is almost identical to last year's. So why release a report at all? According to Collins, she and Adam Sarner, who co-authored the report with Collins, questioned whether the report needed updating earlier in the year. But because they saw increased interest and investment in marketing solutions they wanted to update the report and say "should things continue to improve over the next six months Leaders or Challengers could emerge in 2011."

When asked in an interview what it would take to jump from the Visionaries quadrant to the Leaders quadrant Collins said: "Vendors need to push entire integrated platforms to more companies."

Though she has seen a good amount of tactical investing companies were not looking into EMM for much of last year. She remains optimistic however.

"Requirements continue to broaden as we're seeing an upturn in the economy," she said.